The St. Louis Blues have dropped three straight games, and their playoff hopes are starting to fade away. It is a hard stretch right now, as there is one more back-to-back scheduled for this month, and nine more games over the next 20 days.
This is all because of the Olympics next month. which squished a rapid schedule for January. From the beginning, you could see that these games would either make or break this season, and right now, it is nearly broken.
After January is over and the Olympics are done with, the last stretch of the season will begin. March holds the Trade Deadline, and there is a lot of discussion on what the Blues are going to do. Do they dismantle the core and try to rebuild? Or, do they try and just use these players, as well as draft picks and prospects, as leverage for a bigger prize?
Last season's trade deadline was very quiet, with no moves coming from General Manager Doug Armstrong. Brayden Schenn was the hot topic, but nothing came to be. This team bet on themselves and won, and the rest was history with their franchise-record 12-game win streak.
This time around, it is likely going to be very different.
Not so silent
All season long, Armstrong has been fielding calls on their core pieces. It is more likely of a chance that one or two of the top contracts on this team will be moved. It is just unclear in which direction they will be used.
The Blues are six points out of a playoff spot, and have a handful of games more than those who are playoff-bound right now. That is a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time. Not to mention that this team just lost three straight games, and has a gauntlet of playoff hopefuls in front of them like Carolina, Edmonton, Dallas twice, and Florida. This is gonna be rough.
Expect that phone to be off the hook, trying to move Schenn, Robert Thomas, Pavel Buchnevich, Colton Parayko, Justin Faulk, and Jordan Kyrou. The signing of Philip Broberg for another six years means that the defensive core is highly likely to be shifted. Faulk brings in more of a return, as he is having a very solid year offensively. Parayko has a pedigree and history of being a fantastic defensman, but has not been that way this year.
Of the forward group, Kyrou and Schenn make the most sense to trade away. Thomas can replace the captaincy vacancy, and Dylan Holloway is poised to become this team's next leading scorer. Those two can bring in a lot to help with rebuilding the defense, as well as supplementing the graduating prospects like Jimmy Snuggerud, Dalibor Dvorsky, Otto Stenberg and eventually, Justin Carbonneau.